So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Edward]

It is the same here. There are plenty of homes for sale over 450k. These homes don't sell, they can sit on the market for months. The average salary here is 40k a year. Homes under 250k sell like hot cakes; days and they are gone, new build or not. But homes under 200k are completely non-existent. Empty 2 acre lots here cost nearly that much.

The real difficulty for many affordable home in London too is that if it's not a newbuild, you can't apply for any of the help-to-buy schemes (those all end up being out in th burbs), and much of your competition are buy to let landlords. The latter tend to do very well in London, not least because they could afford to buy in Hackney or Peckham or any of these areas when they were very good investments and known to be such, but still places you wouldn't want to live, because they could afford not to have to live there.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
And those investors would be the first to tell you they “saved” the neighborhood.

 

[HudsonHawk]

People here in greater Denver moan and groan about traffic (while largely disregarding their own contribution to it), as they do in most metropolitan areas, but it's nothing compared to what drivers in many other American cities face on a daily basis. What we do have here, though, is a pretty darned effective public transit system, operating buses and an extensive light-rail network, which has prompted what is called "transit oriented development." A quarter mile or so from our nondescript suburban rambler are about 800 recently constructed apartments on what had been 15 acres of open land when we bought this place. Those apartments are immediately adjacent to a new light-rail station, with a multi-level parking garage. This is working out almost precisely as hoped.

We don't have much of a public transportation system here in Houston because apparently it smacks of socialism. Which is more or less defined around as two people within shouting distance of each other.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The Soviets built one of the finest subway systems in the world in Moscow, the Commie rats.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

And the Nazis built the finest highway system in Europe. When you have slave labor, costs go way down.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Indeed.

 

[Edward]

^^^^^
And those investors would be the first to tell you they “saved” the neighborhood.

To be fair, they often did.... the people who wind me up are the ones who save the old neighbourhoods and then whine with faux nostalgia for what they used to be before.

 

[tonyb]

To be fair, they often did.... the people who wind me up are the ones who save the old neighbourhoods and then whine with faux nostalgia for what they used to be before.

Saved for whom? Certainly not for the former residents whose incomes haven’t come close to keeping pace with housing costs.

I lived in districts that those who didn’t live there often found downright scary. But, because those districts were close-in, and because changing demographics over the decades made those “inner city” neighborhoods increasingly “desirable” (read: costly), longtime residents got priced out.

It worked out okay for me personally. The dewy-eyed bride and I sold our place for a helluva lot more than we paid for it.

Now we live in the suburbs, because that’s where the relatively affordable housing is. And that’s where the more recent arrivals to this fair land tend to congregate. My suburban district is considerably more “diverse” than my old in-city ’hood is now.

 

[Edward]

Saved for whom? Certainly not for the former residents whose incomes haven’t come close to keeping pace with housing costs.

I lived in districts that those who didn’t live there often found downright scary. But, because those districts were close-in, and because changing demographics over the decades made those “inner city” neighborhoods increasingly “desirable” (read: costly), longtime residents got priced out.

It worked out okay for me personally. The dewy-eyed bride and I sold our place for a helluva lot more than we paid for it.

Now we live in the suburbs, because that’s where the relatively affordable housing is. And that’s where the more recent arrivals to this fair land tend to congregate. My suburban district is considerably more “diverse” than my old in-city ’hood is now.

A lot of the areas here in London that became gentrified really were dreadul places. Not places tat were 'only scary if you're rom outside', but genuinely dreadful. Hackney was rife with crime (a main throoughfare was known as the Murder Mile for good reason), Soho was full of prostitution and drug and human trafficking. Initial stages of development made these areas pleasant places to be, and *that's* the nice bit of redevelopment - when they become nice areas. Of course that's hen the negative type of redevelopment kicks off - the newly "nice" areas are then flooded with profiteering-type reevelopment, and all the good flushed out. Notting Hill is a classic: various worthy critics sneered at the film for being unrepresentative of the "real" Notting Hill - full of white, wealthy people, no diversity - except that, by 1999, was reflective of the real Notting Hill, or much of it at least. There's a stage at which redevelopment absolutely has benefitted these areas, but it's the money grubbing that comes later that pushes people out.... and it's always those late money-grubbers who bemoan the "loss of character" when all they have is a sense of false nostalgia for the areas when they were hellholes, long before they ever knew them. It'd be a lot like somebody moving into Whitechapel now, having had rosey memories of living there as a student in 1998, and then complaining "Oh, it's not as nice as when the Krays were here."

 

[GHT]

It'd be a lot like somebody moving into Whitechapel now, having had rosey memories of living there as a student in 1998, and then complaining "Oh, it's not as nice as when the Krays were here."

By 1998 I was living in gentrified Wanstead, but I can tell you that I worked, in a number of locations, for the same company, between 1968 and 1977, from Aldgate to Bethnal Green and on to Bow. In all you felt the sinister touch of The Krays. One night in The Carpenters pub at Stepney, I was the worse for the grog, Con, (you never called him Cornelius,) bodily lifted me to the door, put me down and hailed a cab. Thank goodness that's all he did. Con, known as Cornelius Whitehead, one time driver for Ronnie Kray, later an enforcer for the Krays, before his falling out, went down for seven years at the gang's trial. The area had character? Some might describe it as that, depends on your definition of character.

 

[Edward]

By 1998 I was living in gentrified Wanstead, but I can tell you that I worked, in a number of locations, for the same company, between 1968 and 1977, from Aldgate to Bethnal Green and on to Bow. In all you felt the sinister touch of The Krays. One night in The Carpenters pub at Stepney, I was the worse for the grog, Con, (you never called him Cornelius,) bodily lifted me to the door, put me down and hailed a cab. Thank goodness that's all he did. Con, known as Cornelius Whitehead, one time driver for Ronnie Kray, later an enforcer for the Krays, before his falling out, went down for seven years at the gang's trial. The area had character? Some might describe it as that, depends on your definition of character.

A number of the residents of our block remember the Krays, though generally in a refreshingly objective way: they aren't shy at recognising when they or their boys did decent things, but nor are they backwards about the bad they did either. I imagnie it as abit like living in a police state - you wouldn't need to worry about your house being done over, but all the same it would take its toll being careful what you said wherever you go...

 

[tonyb]

A lot of the areas here in London that became gentrified really were dreadul places. Not places tat were 'only scary if you're rom outside', but genuinely dreadful. Hackney was rife with crime (a main throoughfare was known as the Murder Mile for good reason), Soho was full of prostitution and drug and human trafficking. Initial stages of development made these areas pleasant places to be, and *that's* the nice bit of redevelopment - when they become nice areas. Of course that's hen the negative type of redevelopment kicks off - the newly "nice" areas are then flooded with profiteering-type reevelopment, and all the good flushed out. Notting Hill is a classic: various worthy critics sneered at the film for being unrepresentative of the "real" Notting Hill - full of white, wealthy people, no diversity - except that, by 1999, was reflective of the real Notting Hill, or much of it at least. There's a stage at which redevelopment absolutely has benefitted these areas, but it's the money grubbing that comes later that pushes people out.... and it's always those late money-grubbers who bemoan the "loss of character" when all they have is a sense of false nostalgia for the areas when they were hellholes, long before they ever knew them. It'd be a lot like somebody moving into Whitechapel now, having had rosey memories of living there as a student in 1998, and then complaining "Oh, it's not as nice as when the Krays were here."

"Murder Mile"? Compare homicide rates here in God's Country versus those in yours. (I'm tempted say that your country resembles a primary school in comparison, but in light of the epidemic of school shootings we've seen over here, I'll have to find a more fitting analogy.)

Hookers were a common sight in my old neighborhood, as was fairly conspicuous drug trafficking. (The clientele, for both, was primarily people from outside the district, by the way. They don't tolerate that sort of thing in the "better" districts; it drags down property values, after all.)

Neighborhood "desirability" is to no small degree a self-fulfilling phenomenon. People perceive, rightly or wrongly, that one district is more dangerous than another and the property values reflect that. People get the sense a district is "improving" and property values escalate. And then others smell the money, and if money is what you ain't got, well, they ain't got a place there for you anymore.

Me, I appreciated the groups of scowling young men congregating on street corners. They helped keep the riffraff out.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That's how I felt about the junkyard in my neighborhood. Once the owners died and it was liquidated and cleaned up, the bourgies started sniffing around the neighborhood. The house across the street from me is now for sale, and I'm desperately trying to find someone I know who can buy it. The last thing I want is a snotty retiree neighbor who's going to sneer across the street at my no-account dooryard and my overgrown bushes and my grubby driveway and complain that I'm bringing her property values down. Well, I'm doing the best I can.

 

[tonyb]

I gotta believe that personal mobility is a primary driver in all of this. When generations of people occupied the same housing, when people stayed in the same jobs for their entire working lives, those people had something other than their money invested in the neighborhood. The monetary value of the family home was of little concern to a person who had no intention of selling the place anyway. He or she expected to live there until dragged out cold.

And now? Now we have "reverse" mortgages. It's just another way for wealth to trickle up.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yep, and that really bothers me. I grew up on the same street where my grandfather was born, and it wasn't just a row of houses, it was a reasonably cohesive community of people -- some had lived there for generations, some had just moved in, but there was none of this attitude of a house being an "investment" that could be disposed of as casually as a stock certificate. You bought a house to live in.

My mother still lives there, next door to her childhood best friend/worst enemy, but they're the absolute last survivors. The entire neighborhood has been undermined by speculators and "house flippers" who've turned it into something completely unrecognizable. It upsets my stomach just to drive down the street now and see what these hacks have turned it into.

Someone tried to sell Ma a reverse mortgage, and they were lucky to escape with their life.

 

[Edward]

"Murder Mile"? Compare homicide rates here in God's Country versus those in yours. (I'm tempted say that your country resembles a primary school in comparison, but in light of the epidemic of school shootings we've seen over here, I'll have to find a more fitting analogy.)

I don't doubt it had nothing on some parts of the US. Mostly stabbings. Shootings are relatively rare in the UK, especially post-Hungerford; our gun laws are not as extreme in technical detail as commonly believed, but much of our gun crime is people being lifted for haing the gun rather than using it, which can make the statistics look odd.

Hookers were a common sight in my old neighborhood, as was fairly conspicuous drug trafficking. (The clientele, for both, was primarily people from outside the district, by the way. They don't tolerate that sort of thing in the "better" districts; it drags down property values, after all.)

That's some thing that doesn't go away with gentrification, it's just much less visible on the surface.

Neighborhood "desirability" is to no small degree a self-fulfilling phenomenon. People perceive, rightly or wrongly, that one district is more dangerous than another and the property values reflect that. People get the sense a district is "improving" and property values escalate. And then others smell the money, and if money is what you ain't got, well, they ain't got a place there for you anymore.

The property market is certainly all smoke and mirrors - and location. The fortunes people pay to live in a really ratty bedsit in Kensington would buy a village where I'm from!

Me, I appreciated the groups of scowling young men congregating on street corners. They helped keep the riffraff out.

Friends of mine rented a house in a very loyalist paramilitary area of Belfast when we were students there in the nineties - 97 thorugh 99, the era of ceasefires and the GFA, but there was still an air of danger and certainly you didn't upset your neighbours (some of whom were fresh out of long stretches inside curtailed by the peace agreement). Listening to the Pogues or even U2 could have risked a beating, but on the plusside they paid sixteen quid a week rent for both of them, and they could leae to door lying open any time knowing they'd never be burgled (even if they did suspec the place had been gone through to check them out when they first moved in as the house next door seemed to be a safe house...).

 

[tonyb]

I can't fault a person left with little choice but to tap into his home equity. What annoys me no end is that he is left with little choice. The next door neighbor has done exactly that (got a reverse mortgage), and for exactly that reason. Just a few days ago, as we were chatting in his driveway, he told me that he's told the kids not to expect much when he checks out.

 

[GHT]

I can't fault a person left with little choice but to tap into his home equity. What annoys me no end is that he is left with little choice. The next door neighbor has done exactly that (got a reverse mortgage), and for exactly that reason. Just a few days ago, as we were chatting in his driveway, he told me that he's told the kids not to expect much when he checks out.

The problem is compounded by lifestyle. We are told that credit & debit cards are so much easier and safer than cash. To encourage us to stay with this company or that, loyalty cards are handed out. When I refused a loyalty card the supermarket cashier pointed out that I am missing out on their regular fuel discount. I told her that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Banks, credit cards, debit cards, loyalty cards, online purchases, social media, all build up a profile on you. They then sell copies of that profile and at the same time, fill the gaps buying copies from other companies, so that they almost know your sanitary and intimate details.

A sharp suited salesman in my bank knew me by name, when I told him that I wasn't interested in a reverse mortgage he asked me, why be the richest corpse in the cemetery? He was almost in shock when that I told him that my wife and I both had company and state pensions, yet I was still working, almost nine years past the state retirement age. I left it there, because he might just make a note for future canvassing.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Always remember that whenever the Boys offer you something for free, *you* are the product.

 

[GHT]

Exactly so, Lizzie, exactly so. It's the same modus operandi for scammers, dangle the bait and wait................